Leonardo da Vinci was a transcendent genius. In addition to his accomplishments as an artist and natural philosopher, he was also a brilliant engineer who created schematics for tanks and flying machines 500 years before they were actually built. With the perspective of history, however, one can look at Leonardo's machines and see that while they're extremely clever and fun to look at, a variety of structural flaws mean that the inventions simply don't work. It's a cosmic irony then that Rise of Legends should suffer a similar fate. Big Huge Games took the inventor's schematics and drawings as the basis for the Vinci, one of the three new races in Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, the real-time strategy follow-up to their extraordinary Rise of Nations. While it's extremely clever and fun, it's kept from greatness by a similar variety of structural flaws.

The majority of Rise of Legends' charms arise from its setting. While Rise of Nations had dozens of real-world factions that had only slightly different strategic models, Rise of Legends, pits three strikingly different races against one another. The game is set on the world of Aio, where the technology-focused Vinci battle the mystical Alin, a desert race straight out of the Arabian Nights, whose society is based on magic. Into this mix come the Cuotl, a group of stranded space aliens who have used their extremely advanced technology to enslave an indigenous jungle people and set themselves up as Mayan-style gods. All of them, naturally, want to wipe the other races off the face of Aio.

The game's three factions have virtually nothing in common from an artistic perspective, and that clearly gave the artists a chance to make the game graphically stunning. Vinci units and buildings are ramshackle structures of ducts, rotating gears and pulleys, and pipes spewing foul black smoke. The Alin build beautiful floating palaces with spinning glass decorations and golden minarets. And the Cuotl are based off of the heavy basalt architecture of the Mayans, which means lots of monumental pyramidal structures and units that look like stone idols come to life. Even the game's settings match the artistic look of the races that live there. The lands of Vinci are built with the soft, autumnal colors and diffuse brushstrokes of a Renaissance oil painting. The Alin lands are blindingly bright, filled with a brassy glare and the sharp yellows and whites of the deep desert. Finally, the tangled jungles of the Cuotl are dark green and black and have the sharp-edged geometric character of Mayan carvings. They're all different, and they're all gorgeous.

Rise of Legends' artistic diversity doesn't hold a candle to its strategic diversity, though. Playing as the Alin, for example, is all about fast movement and the creation of dozens of cheap, fragile and disposable troops, while the Vinci are more balanced as well as being a researcher's and base builder's dream race. The Cuotl, though, rely on fewer, tougher units, and the incredible powers of their heroes. This variety really works to the game's advantage. The structure of each side's units, buildings, special abilities, and national powers is so different (and turn quite a few RTS conventions on their head) that any type of RTS gamer will find something to appeal to them. Despite their wildly clashing styles, the whole thing manages to work together as a harmoniously balanced whole.